Video: The Untouchables in Europe: A People Who, Out of Human Contempt, Wanted to Disappear
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
An entire nation has been persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years. His position could be compared, perhaps, only with the untouchables in India. Separate entrances to churches, badges on clothes, a ban on touching - for almost a thousand years these people lived in a society that did not accept them. Today, in tolerant Europe, the majority of the remaining representatives of this "caste" refuse to call themselves Kagot, because this word in French is still abusive.
It is interesting that scientists today have no consensus either about the history of the origin of an entire people, or about the etymology of the word "kagot". There are several versions, and each paints a completely different picture. It is possible that the name comes from the expression "canis gothus" - "gothic dog", and this people are the descendants of ancient Germanic tribes who settled by chance in foreign territories. Perhaps the Kagoths were the descendants of the Moorish soldiers left behind after the Muslim invasions of Spain and France in the 8th century. Despite the fact that they accepted Christianity, the society did not trust them.
However, such theories do not explain why the kagoths were treated as true untouchables, and many researchers deduce the origin of the term from such a word as cafo - "leper." There is also a more peaceful "economic" version - it is possible that the kagoths were a carpenters' guild and suffered from doing business too well. One way or another, but starting from the X century, references to this "special" people have been found in documents.
Over the past 200 years, the Kagoths were almost forgotten, but, nevertheless, the popular memory in the Pyrenees still retains the fear and contempt that "good Christians" felt for these people. The mass of superstitions that attributed leprosy and stench to an entire nation led to real ostracism. There were many prohibitions for the Kagots: to marry "normal" citizens, to choose a profession, to swim in the same reservoirs as other residents, to touch the parapets, railings and even holy water in a church with a bare hand - a sprinkler with holy water the Kagoths had their own, and the priests served the sacrament to them on a long spoon.
One could probably not believe such legends, if not for interesting research: in 60 ancient churches in the Pyrenees, there really are separate entrances with the inscriptions "Cagot", and the old cemeteries of this people are always outside the consecrated territory. By the way, scientists do not find any pathological changes in bones during excavation of burials, so we have to conclude: the kagoths were not lepers or sick, and all the rules against them were simple superstitions.
However, the rules were so strict that in certain areas the kagoths were even forbidden to walk barefoot on the ground. From this came the myth that they had membranes between their fingers, and for several hundred years these people could appear among ordinary citizens only with stripes on their clothes in the form of red goose paws.
There are references to this unfortunate nation and Francois Rabelais. In Melody of the Island, he shows the Kagoths as cholera-stricken harpies. And in the novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" there is a description of Thelem Abbey, on the door of which there is an inscription prohibiting entry to "hypocrites, fanatics and kagoths." It is known that this people was especially contemptuous in Gascony and the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Several conflicting accounts of the appearance of the Kagoths have survived. According to some descriptions, they were stocky dark-haired people, according to others, on the contrary, they were fair-haired and blue-eyed. Interestingly, some physiological features are always mentioned that supposedly distinguished these people from "normal" people: too high body temperature, short stature and the absence of earlobes - a kind of "round ears".
Kagoths settled on those lands where no one wanted to live - either the suburbs, away from the rest of the townspeople, or swampy, barren areas. Professions they also got "unpresentable" associated with death: according to legends and beliefs, they could only work as gravediggers and undertakers, built platforms for executions and weaved ropes. According to surviving later data, the kagoths were really engaged mainly in carpentry work and even built many temples, into which they were then allowed only through a separate entrance and in compliance with all the rules.
The end of this nation is associated with the French Revolution. A little later, the official laws on persecution were abolished, and during the riots and the plundering of archives, most of the Kagots, apparently, deliberately destroyed the lists with their names. So this nation gradually disappeared. It happened in a peaceful way, the Kagoths gradually managed to assimilate, and today most of the descendants of this forgotten people refuse to call themselves the same as their ancestors once called and prefer not to remember the past.
You can become "untouchable" for various reasons. In India, for example, there is a special "third sex" - a caste of untouchables, which is both worshiped and feared
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